"Wait, Stephen," said he; "I wish to speak to you about the lost match-box that you assured me you would bring back to-morrow. This lad has already brought it to me. What light can you throw upon the matter?"
"I found the match-box," answered the boy sulkily. "I only lent it to Dick Wilkins, and I suppose he's been dishonest enough to claim the reward."
"Oh!" cried Dick, in shocked accents. "Oh! how can you say so, Master Stephen?"
At this point, Colonel Flamank interposed and bade Dick be silent.
"Stephen," he afterwards said, "you are telling me a deliberate falsehood! You did not lend the match-box to this child; you forced it on him, in return for his shilling, which you had stolen."
"Well, he agreed to the exchange," said young Filmer, forgetting that a moment since he had stated that the match-box had been lent. "Do you think, if I'd treated him as he says, that he wouldn't have made a fuss and told my father about it?"
"You know what threats you employed to silence him, Stephen," rejoined the colonel. "You know that you sealed his lips by saying you would get his poor widowed mother out of her work at the Manor House, if he carried his story to the squire."
"And so I will, now he has sneaked upon me," was the savage response.
"No, indeed, you will not," Colonel Flamank assured him. "Had you shown any regret for your cowardly conduct, I might have been inclined to spare you by letting the matter pass. But you are far from repentant; and it is time a stop was put to your tyranny. I shall thoroughly investigate this affair, and prove or disprove the truth of Dick Wilkins's statement. After that, I shall make it my business to lay the facts of the case before both your parents. Now you can go your way."
And the squire's son passed out of sight, for once in his life really frightened and abashed.